21.5.16

1. Putting your own opinion to a
fact. Unless you’re 100% certain – it’s not a fact, and you’re probably making
it worse.

2. Waiting for something better
to come along before you quit the thing you hate. This goes out to all the
people stuck in dead end jobs, mismatched relationships, and boring social
circles. Tomorrow never comes.

3. Not asking someone out because
you think they are out of your league. Give them a chance to make that
decision, not you.

4. Worrying about the traffic jam
making you late for work, getting caught in the downpour without a jacket, or
forgetting to get back to someone after you made a promise. Shit happens, get
over it.

5. Thinking you’re more important
than anyone else. You’re not. You’re just as important as everyone else.

6. Blaming other people when shit
hits the fan. If it’s your own fault, admit it. If it’s not, then assume the
person responsible is fully aware – they don’t need you pointing it out.

7. Forcing your religious beliefs
onto another person. Well done – you’re a
Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Atheist/Jedi… whatever, do you want a medal?

8. Being afraid to spend money.
You worked hard to earn it – so do something with it.

9. Waiting for a magical sum of
money to appear. There is never enough – the sooner you realise this, the
sooner you can start living.

10. Buying lottery tickets. See
number 9.

11. Believing something to be true
because you heard it from an authority. Do your own research. Form your own
judgment. Trust your own instincts.

12. Ignoring your instincts. They’ll
keep you alive.

13. Ignoring advice. Even if it
seems misplaced – it probably comes from personal experience – which makes it
completely relevant.

14. Refusing to watch a movie,
read a book or buy a product just because it’s popular. One day, you’ll miss
out on something amazing.

15. Looking too far into the
future. It will never exist.

16. Trying to erase the past. It
happened – accept it.

17. Ignoring the present moment.
This shit is happening so pay attention.

18. Focusing too much on making a
good impression. They will see the ‘you’ that they see – and there’s not a lot
you can do about it. If you act with integrity, treat them with respect and
look them in the eye – you’ve successfully played your part in their life
story.

19. Allowing other people to write
your story. Save that for when you’re dead.

20. Giving someone a lecture about
a subject you know nothing about. People are remarkably good at sniffing out
bullshit.

24. Blaming yourself for not
realising something was wrong. You didn’t know because they didn’t want you to
know. End of.

25. Suffering in silence. It’s not
your fault. It’s an illness, and people give a shit. Let someone in – even if
it’s one person – it could change your life.

26. Being scared of success. Fear
is an essential part of life and expecting it to go away will always end in
disappointment. Some of the world’s greatest entertainers get nervous before a
performance. Some of the world’s greatest athletes are full of self-doubt as
they face their opponent. Some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, innovators,
and CEO’s question their own products the night before a big launch. Always be
afraid – never stand still.

27. Doing the same thing over and
over, and expecting a different result. If something isn’t working then try
something new.

28. Aiming for perfection and
avoiding mistakes. The person who never made a mistake – never made anything.

29. Living your life vicariously
through others. Great writers will always take you along for the ride, but
learn the difference between inspiration and imaginary. The brain is easily
fooled into thinking it was really there.

30. Reading ‘The Secret’. The
universe is just as lazy as you are. Do yourself, and it, a favour by at least
meeting it halfway. Sitting on your fat ass and wishing for a better life is
the reason why you have a fat ass in the first place. Expect brain-rot to kick
in next.

31. Being jealous. It ruins lives.

32. Believing there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Quit your whining, work harder, and meet the right people – all within your
capability.

33. Feeling pressured into
following the crowd. If you really don’t want to do something, then you have
every right to say no.

34. Using silence as your
preferred method of communication. If someone sends you a text, then you reply.
If you have to let someone down, then tell them. If there is a date you cannot
make, a deadline you cannot hit or an agreement you no longer wish to honour –
then speak up.

35. Following the news. It’s
negative, untrustworthy, and it will not enhance your life in any way, shape or
form.

36. Getting involved in online
arguments. You may as well be talking to yourself.

38. Giving up something you really
want because it’s difficult. Everything you’ve ever done was difficult at some
stage. As a small kid you learned how to read, write, and recall 26 random
characters – in sequence. You reached fluency in one of the most challenging
languages ever created. You went from the comfort and safety of your home to
spending most of your days in an alien environment cooped up with 20 likeminded
strangers. You dealt with ghosts in the night, monsters under the bed, and
lived in a world of giants. Do you think your life is difficult? Your 5 year
old self is mocking you right now. Man up.

39. Forgetting numbers 1 through
to 38. Go back and find the one which resonates with you the most.

14.5.16

The prettiest smiles
hide the deepest secrets. The prettiest eyes have cried the most tears and the
kindest hearts have felt the most pain.

Anonymous

She said, “I’m so afraid.” And I said, “Why?,”
and she said, “Because I’m so profoundly happy. Happiness like this is
frightening.” I asked her why and she said, “They only let you be this happy if
they’re preparing to take something from you.”

Khaled Hossein

Never have I seen so many young, privileged,
people trying so hard to be happy. There are countless articles written about
it, blogs named for it, workshops attending to it. Who ever said we’re supposed
to be happy all the time, anyway? We’re not. And the pressure to do so might be
what’s making us unhappy to begin with. It’s OK if you’re not completely
content with your life twenty-four hours a day. Can you imagine what a boring
person you’d be if you were? Going through shit storms, feeling uninspired,
hating the way you look and having guilt over not accomplishing enough are just
some of the things that make you interesting, relatable and human. Not to
mention, if you’re reading this, then you have internet access and if you have
internet access, it stands to reason that you have a computer, which makes me
think you probably have a place to live, with electricity and plenty of food to
eat and clean clothes to wear, which are all things that an enormous amount of
people living on the planet today do not have. This is not to say that people
shouldn’t strive to better their positions in life, however it seems like so
many of us are no longer content with a regular amount of happy, yet dead-set
on being maniacally jubilant, all of the time.

Kelly Rheel

One day someone is going to hug you so tight
that all of your broken pieces will stick back together

Anonymous

People are afraid of themselves, of their own
reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but
that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that
pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to
feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re
wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the
experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is
a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel
ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality.
You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.

Jim Morrison

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his
own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or
around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no
respect he ceases to love.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We hold on so tightly, because we’re terrified
of loss. We hold on till our hands bleed. And in that self-shattering
persistence, we fail to see the answer: Just let go.

Yasmin Mogahed

We need people in our lives with whom we can be
as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such
a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.

Thomas Moore

Your work is going to fill a large part of your
life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great
work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t
found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart,
you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets
better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it.
Don’t settle.

Steve Jobs

Everyone has the heartbreak that shapes them in
a way that they could never go back to the innocence that they had before.

Zooey Deschanel

May your coming year be filled with magic and
dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who
thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or
build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year,
you surprise yourself.

Neil Gaiman

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes,
but when you look back, everything is different.

C.S. Lewis

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and
love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open
to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need
to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we
cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or
our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the
fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

John Lennon

Stop holding on to what hurts, and start making
room for what feels good.

Unknown

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that
the other person does not care at all.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Relax. You will become an adult. You will
figure out your career. You will find someone who loves you. You have a whole
lifetime; time takes time. The only way to fail at life is to abstain.

Johanna de Silentio

I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I
think it scared her. She was the type to like things that were concrete, like
the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it was. I think that’s
why she struggled with love. She couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t hold on to it
and make sure it never changed.

Carrie Ryan

Sometimes people think they know you. They know
a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to
them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that
they are right. But the truth is, that isn’t you. That isn’t you at all.

Leila Sales

But the struggles make you stronger and the
changes make you wise. And happiness has its own way of taking its sweet time.

Gary Allen

You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are
made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever
apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less
traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and
leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat
of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.

Mandy Hale

Once you truly believe you’re worthy of love,
you will never settle for anyone’s second best treatment.

Charles J. Orlando

Until you get comfortable with being alone,
you’ll never know if you’re choosing someone out of love or loneliness.

Mandy Hale

Nothing that’s worthwhile is ever easy.
Remember that.

Nicholas Sparks

It’s possible to go on, no matter how
impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief … lessens. It may not go away
completely, but after a while it’s not so overwhelming.

Nicholas Sparks

And I pray that you no longer seek happiness
from the past, but rather you set your sails forward, to a land that is pure
and wonderful. I pray that you no longer stare into the shallows of empty
promises, but that you dive into the depth of an ocean of guarantees. May you
feel the winds of hope, and smell the scent of joy, may your heart be alive
again as it was meant to be. For you are with a better captain, you are with a
true sailor, a true leader; You are sailing with Christ, and He is always sure
to lead us home.

T.B. LaBerge

There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s
mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their
whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Friends can help each other. A true friend is
someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself – and especially to
feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine
with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he
really is.

Jim Morrison

Sometimes, I sit alone under the stars and
think of the galaxies inside my heart, and truly wonder if anyone will ever
want to make sense of all that I am.

Christopher Poindexter

The reason it hurts so much to separate is
because our souls are connected. Maybe they always have been and will be. Maybe
we’ve lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we’ve found
each other. And maybe each time, we’ve been forced apart for the same reasons.
That means that this goodbye is both a goodbye for the past ten thousand years
and a prelude to what will come. When I look at you, I see your beauty and
grace and know they have grown stronger with every life you have lived. And I
know I have spent every life before this one searching for you. Not someone
like you but you, for your soul and mine must always come together. And then, for
a reason neither of us understands, we’ve been forced to say goodbye. I would
love to tell you that everything will work out for us, and I promise to do all
I can to make sure it does. But if we never meet again and this is truly
goodbye, I know we will see each other again in another life. We will find each
other again, and maybe the stars will have changed, and we will not only love
each other in that time, but for all the times we’ve had before.

Nicholas Sparks

People who believe they’ll be happy if they go
and live somewhere else, learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you
take yourself with you.

Neil Gaiman

As much as I would love to be a person that
goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time, that doesn’t
work for me. I’d just rather sit at home and read, or go out to dinner with
someone, or talk to someone I love, or talk to somebody that makes me laugh.

Daniel Radcliffe

Curvy women are real women. Skinny women are
real women. Women who have had boob jobs or lip enhancements or liposuction are
still real women. Size 0 may make no sense mathematically, but a woman who
wears that size is as real as the one who wears a size 16. What makes us “real”
people is not the shape of our flesh but our basic humanity. And we lose our
humanity when we judge – not when we lose weight, gain weight, or make the
intensely personal decision to undergo cosmetic surgery.

7.5.16

The
beautiful and mind-bending illusions in Canadian artist Robert
Gonsalves’ paintings have a fun way of twisting your perception and
causing you to question what in his paintings, if anything, is real.

Most of his stunning paintings have an unclear boundary
between the multiple stories they tell, which forces the viewer to jump back
and forth between them – like an optical illusion that changes every time you
look at it.

Gonsalves’ interest in art began at an early age, which is
why he became comfortable with painting such complex misdirections. He had
experience with technique and perspective and architectural art by the age of
12. When he encountered Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, they clearly left a
lasting impact on his amazing paintings as well. Take a look!

1.5.16

Karis is a young lion cub at Scotland’s Blair Drummond Safari Park. Recently, as her keepers were raking leaves to tidy up her enclosure, one of them thought it might be fun to leave a pile for Karis to play in. Karis agreed. Yes, that would be fun…